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Radio York plugs flood news gap

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BBC
Radio York was the only source of emergency information for much of the
local community on Sunday night when areas of North Yorkshire were
devastated by flash floods.

The station ran an emergency
broadcast throughout the night after storms hit the area and took out
the Bilsdale TV transmitter, which stopped terrestrial television until
Tuesday morning.

Managing editor Matt Youdale told Press Gazette:
“We had just come through the single biggest editorial task we’ve had
with Royal Ascot and were effectively running two radio stations for
five days up until Saturday – we were ready for a rest on Sunday
evening.

The alarm was raised earlier in the evening and we were on air with emergency information by 10.30pm.”

Radio
York had experience of covering floods in 2000 when a wider area of the
region, including York city centre, was devastated by waters.

“The
template we created in 2000 for covering local emergencies is now used
by a lot of other BBC stations. We had a tremendous response from
listeners, including 185,000 hits on the website in the 24 hours after
the floods.”